


A Seal Upon Your Arm

by nonisland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Court Politics, Devotion, Don't Try This At Home, Established Relationship, F/M, FE3H Kinkmeme, Fealty Kink, Kink Discovery, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Scars, Sexual Content, Throne Sex, fódlan has opera they can have fountain pens, never confirmed NOT to be everyone lives AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26278360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: “Hubert von Vestra has served meunflinchinglyfor almost my entire life.” Edelgard puts her pen down on the table with a click that echoes off the walls. “Not one of you can say a fraction of the same.”Hubert has a scar on the back of his upper arm from his attempts to evade his father’s soldiers after the Insurrection, though it’s thinned with age. He was only ten, and he’d never trained in hand-to-hand. They’d doubtless been told not to hurt him.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 10
Kudos: 73
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	A Seal Upon Your Arm

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**3houseskinkmeme**](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/) [prompt](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1608.html?thread=2852168) “Someone denounces Hubert at a public occasion for being a Rasputin figure, a skulker in the shadows who doesn't fight like an honorable warrior, a mere servant with unfair closeness to the Emperor, or something of that sort. Edelgard orders him to strip on the spot and goes through his scars one by one, asking him how he got each one in her service.  
>  +Then she excuses them and they bang. Alternately,  
>  ++Then she doesn't excuse them and they bang.”
> 
> I didn’t manage to get public sex in here—the Adrestia in my head is very much that Austen-adaptation erotic-glove-removal flavor—but here we are otherwise, with many thanks to Scott for figuring out the setup for me; to Ember for telling me that no, I could _not_ just fade to black; and to both of them for making sure that I didn’t go too egregiously wrong anywhere. Any remaining errors are mine, not theirs. *handwaves magical or herbal birth control*
> 
> Title from the Song of Solomon (various translations): “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm”
> 
> * * *

This month’s meeting to determine new governance is with representatives of the territories north of the Oghma Mountains, and it is going…poorly. Constance would at least have been a familiar face, but since Nuvelle was already settled House Nuvelle had just sent a secretary to keep its lady informed, which leaves Edelgard alone except for Hubert, again, in the drafty halls of Arundel Castle.

She is a bit on edge. She would prefer not to be in Arundel Castle at all, and she would certainly prefer to have a few more friends with her—at the absolute least, Linhardt should have come, since one of the people she’s replacing is him, but he’d refused. Instead she just has two dozen or so bickering former nobles and the odd few well-off merchants, all convinced that _they_ will do better at ruling Hevring or Ochs, Essar or Bartels, Gerth or Arundel itself than all the others.

Edelgard has already decided to retain Arundel for the crown, though once she finds a successor they can give it away again if they wish. She doesn’t like the idea of hearing anyone call “Lord Arundel!” across a room she’s in ever again.

If she said so, there are at least three people she could just ask to leave the meeting at once. Unfortunately, most of her government—most of her _friends_ —were in agreement that she had to at least _pretend_ to listen to everyone who made their case in this awkward time of realignment. Once the first beneficiaries of Ferdinand’s schools are fully-grown, things might be different, but for now…

Edelgard pins a smile more firmly to her face as she returns her attention to—oh, flames—Rudolf von Ochs, that’s his name.

“As a cousin of the late baron,” he’s saying, “I am familiar with the particular needs of the barony of Ochs.”

“Former barony,” Edelgard says with false mildness.

One of the other Ochs representatives says, “You were only a _third_ cousin of the late baron! I was raised in his household!”

Edelgard carefully prints, _Do we know about RvO’s debt yet?_ on the open leaf of the notebook in front of her, then taps her pen against the page.

Hubert, a shield at her back, bends down and murmurs, “I regret, your Majesty, that I am still working on it. I have sent to Varley to ask Yuri to confirm my current suspicion, but we had to set out before I received his response.”

Rudolf von Ochs should not be that far in debt over anything he can only buy through the underworld. Edelgard’s smile thins even further as she crosses out her question and looks up at the bickering ex-nobles. She can feel the air cool as Hubert straightens away from her again.

“Your Majesty,” says one of the von Essars—Edelgard racks her brain and comes up with Emma, which she doesn’t think is right. “If House Ochs prefers to turn to infighting, I would be happy to present our own case to retain governance of Essar now.”

Professor Hanneman had had the right idea, Edelgard thinks. “House Ochs, do you wish to postpone your turn?” she asks, and writes _Emma von Essar?_ for Hubert.

“Irma,” he says, low enough that his breath against her ear feels louder than the word itself.

Edelgard does not sigh wistfully as she crosses out the question.

“Your Majesty,” the Ochs fosterling—it must be Linza von Ochs—says, tossing her hair impatiently, “ _I_ am entirely ready to present _my_ case. I can hardly speak for my distant cousin—”

“You’re no relation at all! Your great-grandmother only married Clemens’s great—”

Dorothea had taught Edelgard to imagine her lungs filling like a bellows, her ribs taking on the vaulted dimensions of a cathedral. She does that now, and snaps, “ _Enough_.”

House Ochs falls silent.

Edelgard sweeps a glare from Rudolf to Linza to Viator, who has so far done more to advance his cause by staying silent after introducing himself than either of the others have by speaking. She cannot, and will not, work with anyone who refuses to cooperate with their peers. There are two more House Ochs hopefuls somewhere in the crowd, and if they wish to steal a march on Viator they should probably remind her of their identities at some point.

Irma von Essar crosses her arms smugly. Edelgard gives her a look of sincere dislike, wishes again that Constance had come herself, and says, “House Gerth, you have the floor.”

“Your Majesty.” Johannes von Gerth, brother of the late duke, bows. “It has long been my hope that you would recognize the service our House has provided the Empire, and the ordeal my unfortunate brother endured before the war at the hands of your enemies—leading as it did to his subsequent untimely demise—by permitting me to inherit in his stead.”

_No_ , Edelgard thinks. Alas, she is supposed to at least pretend to listen. “It would not be an inheritance in the old sense,” she says.

“My younger son would be far better suited to the role of your”—Johannes’s eyes flick past Edelgard, and up—“secretary, as well, should you wish an improvement.”

Edelgard’s hand tightens on her pen so hard she’s surprised she doesn’t snap it, breaking the barrel open and leaving her as spattered in ink as she ever was in blood. As Hubert always tried to keep her from being. “Excuse me?” she asks, the chill in her voice biting like a Faerghus winter.

A few of the less obtrusive candidates inch backward. The Nuvelle secretary suddenly becomes very absorbed in sorting through papers.

“Your secretary,” Johannes says, a little more loudly than before. “It’s all very well and good to bring a von Vestra everywhere with you during a war, your Majesty, but now that it’s peacetime you’ll want someone a little more suited to civilized company, and someone with a little more civilized talent as well, eh?”

Edelgard stares at him. For a moment she can’t even put two words together; outrage steals her breath and blunts her mind.

Viator von Ochs must mistake her silence for consideration, because he chooses now to speak again. “If your Majesty wishes to set a good example of what the new Adrestian Empire is, certainly you’ll wish someone who represents your Majesty as trustworthy and honorable—as, indeed, your Majesty is. I have a business partner I could sincerely recommend…”

Edelgard turns to look at Hubert, standing impassive behind her. She has seen him threaten people’s lives just for slighting her swordwork, but when he inclines his head to meet her eyes she can’t read any anger in his face—nothing other than simple acknowledgement.

Somehow, Viator von Ochs is still talking, a distant drone from behind her. “…and would be much more suitable, in my opinion, for your Majesty’s needs, than the von Gerth son.”

“Enough,” Edelgard says. She is surprised she can speak. She is surprised her voice isn’t shaking with rage, cracked like the surface of a glacier. “Silence. All of you, silence.”

Finally the rest of them seem to realize they’ve misstepped.

“Hubert von Vestra has served me _unflinchingly_ for almost my entire life.” Edelgard puts her pen down on the table with a click that echoes off the walls. “Not one of you can say a fraction of the same. Your brother,”—she skewers Johannes von Gerth with a look—“the uncle of the man you are offering to replace Marquis Vestra, broke his oath to my father and threatened my life as well. He was aided in his treason by my _own_ uncle, my mother’s brother, who my father had ennobled for her sake.” Fury boils inside her, pressing against the underside of her skin.

Hubert has a scar on the back of his upper arm from his attempts to evade his father’s soldiers then, though it’s thinned with age. He was only ten, and he’d never trained in hand-to-hand. They’d doubtless been told not to hurt him.

“Hubert,” she says, still nothing but wrath stretched thin over anger and fear and the echoes of Thales’s voice replacing Uncle Volkhard’s here in these rooms that she had once happily visited, “take off your shirt.”

There is a shocked murmur from the assembled crowd, which Edelgard ignores. She’s looking only at Hubert. His brows go up and the twist of his mouth is unamused, but there’s no hesitation in his voice when he says, “As you command, your Majesty, though it will hardly be an edifying sight.”

“I think they will find themselves very much edified,” she says, still biting out the words. She wishes she had Aymr at hand, or even a plain silver axe, but an emperor is not supposed to fight her own battles—at least not over a bargaining table. She’d brought guards and Hubert instead. She regrets it.

“I say,” Johannes says uneasily, “I don’t think… That is, I don’t know how things are done in the capital, but…”

She ignores him.

Hubert unbuttons his gloves and pulls them off, one at a time. His fingertips are blackened, as if they’d been scorched, and the curls of magic burn trail up along the veins on the back of his hands.

Johannes von Gerth falls silent. Nobody else speaks.

Hubert unfastens his cloak—the first clasp, the second. Each motion is steady and economical, until he pulls the cape from his shoulders and hesitates.

“Give it to me.” Edelgard holds out her hand.

“You hardly need to carry my cloak,” Hubert says reprovingly.

“When you took it off on my orders?”

This time he speaks for her ears, not the room’s. “Even then, Lady Edelgard.”

“Then on the floor,” she says impatiently. The reminder of his magical abilities will only hold this wretched, worthless crowd for so long.

Hubert lets the cloak fall and unbuckles his belt. That he coils neatly through his hands, then steps forward and sets on the table in front of her, so gently that even she can’t hear a sound. His jacket is next—he hangs that over the high back of her thronelike chair, carefully, doubtless so the daggers won’t clank or fall—leaving him in just his shirt.

Edelgard watches him tensely. She would have hated it if anyone asked her to bare her own scars to strangers, even for some good reason, especially to strangers as hostile as these. Hubert doesn’t falter, though. He must feel her attention on him because he glances at her and one corner of his mouth lifts, just a hair, in what she knows to be a reassuring smile.

He unbuttons his cuffs first, then unpins the brooch at his throat. Sets the brooch on the table as well. Tugs his shirttails free of the waist of his trousers. As he undoes the buttons down the front of the shirt, someone gasps.

That would be the place where one of those who slithered in the dark had tried to gut him, no doubt, revealed as the fabric parts. It had left a ragged red scar across his stomach.

“What now, your Majesty?” Hubert asks, turning to face her, letting his shirt fall from his dark-stained hands. There are more gasps.

He has never had the heavy musculature of an armored fighter, but neither is he the puny wretch he’d warned her to expect. His body is admirably suited for everything he needs of it, and nothing outside the ordinary. It’s the scars that everyone is reacting to.

She swallows and stands. By coincidence or by design, he’s left just enough space between her table and himself for her to walk around him. “This scar, Marquis Vestra. Here, on the back of your left arm.” She picks up her pen and traces the mark with the smooth end, not touching his bare skin with her hands—as proper an emperor as they dare ask her to be. “Where did you get it?”

“Ah,” Hubert says, very softly, and turns so the assembled ex-nobles can have a better view. Louder, he answers, “It was when your late uncle took you to the Kingdom, your Majesty.”

“Tell me,” Edelgard says.

He gives her a real smile then, with his back to the room where nobody can see. It softens his eyes from peridot to the color of new leaves. “He chose to betray your father in the Insurrection, but took you away. I was…devastated. It was my sworn duty to keep you safe, and you were gone.”

_I thought at the time it would have been kinder_ , Hubert had said when she’d first traced the thin silvered line of that scar, much-faded, _if he had cracked my ribs open and taken my heart instead._

In front of their audience his voice is cooler, more composed. “The only thing to be done was to go after you.”

“You were ten,” Edelgard says, in case any of the assembled ex-nobles are as incapable of counting as they are of basic decency.

A soft murmur rises, broken through by distinct phrases: “couldn’t have” — “so _young_ ” — “himself?!”

“I was ten,” Hubert agrees. “I made it three days north of Enbarr, but was eventually subdued by my traitorous father’s guard. Their intention was not to harm me, but I resisted strenuously. After all, you were in the hands of a traitor as well, far from home, without allies.”

Her throat tightens. She swallows again, moves again, and he turns after her as she circles him. “And this one?” she asks, reaching up to tap the line at the side of his neck, catching against the hollow of his collarbone. She can barely see it, from this angle, but nearly everyone else here is taller than she.

“A blade wielded by one of those who slithered in the dark,” he says. “Mis-aimed, fortunately. I had grown careless from fatigue—it was the third day of the mission.”

“Go on,” she says.

Hubert lifts one shoulder slightly. “I was alone. This was before your coronation. I had no one I could trust to come with me, but my target was planning certain…experiments. I hoped to put an end to him before any more children went missing from Hrym.”

Edelgard bites the inside of her mouth against the need to touch him, to comfort and seek comfort. She watches his chest rise and fall with his breathing and takes what she can from that.

“I did, eventually.” The usual harshness is gone from his voice. “I could hardly allow so minor a wound to let me fall before I had helped you achieve your destiny.”

He had nearly had his throat cut. She sweeps a look across the room and sees that the point has not been lost on everyone, then circles him again. “This one.” She touches the knotted line across his right upper arm. The barrel of the pen is warm from her hand, at least, but it’s a poor substitute for a finger.

“I thought a sword to the arm a safer bet than a sword to the throat,” Hubert says. “The knight of Seiros swinging it was fast enough that I had to choose one or the other.”

Most of the weapon-wounds he’d earned on the field of battle barely scarred at all, thanks to a ready application of faith magic. This one had cut to the bone, so deep that the sword had caught long enough to leave the knight off-balance when Petra darted across the space between and ran him through. Only Dorothea’s Physic had saved Hubert’s life, and Linhardt’s more patient work later had been enough to save the use of his arm, but not the look of it.

“In my war,” Edelgard says.

He nods. “Of course.”

“You trained as the rest of House Vestra does, to do the emperor’s work in the shadows.” To try to spare her from everything, even the worst parts of herself. “But this wasn’t an assassination, was it.”

“I could not refuse to follow you,” Hubert says. He is still speaking for the audience, but his voice is rougher than before. “I would hardly send you into battle unprotected, your Majesty.”

“You earned this scar”—her lips peel back from her teeth at the foolishness of it—“ _honorably_ , then, on an open blood-soaked field in full sunlight, facing your enemies.”

“Oh yes.” She knows even before she looks that Hubert’s mouth has curled with amusement. “Fighting side-by-side with Ferdinand von Aegir and Caspar von Bergliez, whom I think no one would accuse of _working in the shadows_.”

Edelgard has to laugh at the thought as well, then sobers. “And yet, you didn’t shirk that obligation either.” She traces the jagged edge of the scar across his stomach. His breath catches; the muscles beneath her pen jump. She looks up in surprise to find him staring down at her with darkening eyes.

Some of her fury burns away—part in surprise, part from the way he looks at her. Her mouth goes dry. She licks her lips before she says, “What about this one?”

“This one was from a scouting mission in the Agarthan War.” His voice is still controlled, but she knows him. She can hear the effort in it, now that she knows to listen, and she doesn’t—she hates that he’s almost died all these times for her, she _does_ , but… “It is fortunate that I was not alone that time. An assassin’s blade cut me open.”

Yuri had been with him on that mission—they’d started in the underworld and gone further down. He’d made light of it when he brought Hubert back.

Hubert had said he hadn’t wished to _bother_ her with it. She’d been so incandescent with fear and anger that she’d forgotten to hesitate and flung herself at him, kissing him so fiercely she’d split his lip against his teeth. “They gutted you,” she says now.

He nods.

“You would have died if you’d been on your own, but so much of what you offered to do you did alone.”

“I accepted the risk to protect you, Lady Edelgard.”

It sparks another thrill under her skin. She wants to turn and shout at the onlookers, _Don’t you see? How dare you suggest someone else take his place?_ Instead she tamps the urge down and says, “Your trousers, Marquis Vestra.”

His eyes widen for just a moment, but he makes no other protest. There is another susurrus of shock behind her, but she ignores it.

“Really,” someone says—it might be that pompous, witless windbag Johannes von Gerth again. “I know they say…that is…”

A woman says, “He wouldn’t dare,” with the stridency of doubt.

“Couldn’t send my son to Enbarr for _that_.” Ah, so it is Johannes. The only thing that keeps her from ordering him dismissed right now is a refusal to let him leave while he’s still rotting in his own ignorance.

Hubert goes to one knee beside her and starts unbuttoning his boots. She could reach out and rest a hand on his bare shoulder, curl her fingers around the solid warmth of flesh and bone. She could steady them both, except—except. They need her to be the shining figurehead of the Empire. Pure, as Hubert had once said. She’s straining their audience’s tolerance to the limit as it is.

“Your hands,” she says. Her voice is a little too loud, not quite even. “I’ve heard that unmixed magic takes a toll on the body.”

“I am afraid I have little knack for healing.” He shifts his weight as he works the first boot and stocking off, then settles onto the other knee. His bare foot is pale against the rough stone of the floor, and she can hear the greedy, gossiping whispers strengthen again. “I have been a practitioner of reason magic for, say, fifteen years now, more or less a summer.”

“Does it hurt?”

He looks up at her, hands at his ankle. They might have been alone in the room, if it were silent. “Only when I’ve cast too many spells without rest, your Majesty. The sensation then is…distinctive. I have never dipped my hands in acid, but I suspect it must feel remarkably similar.”

Edelgard had studied reason magic herself, briefly. It was a prickle under the skin at first, nothing worse—like warming your hands at a fire after you’d been wrist-deep in snow. She’d decided to focus on axe and shield instead, but she remembers nonetheless. “How often have you done that?”

“Countless times,” he says, rising with a humorless smile. “In the war you led, and then the one you trusted to me, but I doubt any more often than you kept swinging your axe until your arms could no longer lift it. Knowing that, your Majesty, how could I have put aside my spells while my fingers would still bend to cast them?”

The rush of fierce pride at that threatens to make her weep. Still she can’t turn and scream at the watchers.

He unfastens the buttons of his trousers—slower now, not balking but hesitant nonetheless. Her back is to the room. She shapes the words, “Is this all right?” with her mouth, silently.

Hubert nods. It’s the slightest inclination of his head, that’s all, but it’s enough. She moves to the side as he steps out of his trousers and stands there before everyone who even intends to matter in northern Adrestia, in nothing but his smallclothes and his scars.

“On your left leg,” she says, not even needing to bend to point. The marks are sword-straight but tapering from a broader end, long narrow wedges of raised and reddened skin.

“I prefer magic when I am the one who wields it.” His voice is dry. “This is what the aftereffect of Dark Spikes Tau looks like, if the spike fails to impale you completely. An inferior casting, of course, but still effective.”

Edelgard says, “Indeed.” She hopes her tone matches the careful dryness of his. “And the caster?”

“Another of those who slithered, defending one of the towns of Hrym they were using. Resources, food, victims…”

“In my empire,” Edelgard says, letting a little of that burning, singing, protective rage into her voice.

Hubert turns to her just enough to bow. “Not any longer, your Majesty.” It must bring the near-circle of the scar on his right thigh to their audience’s eyes, half-hidden beneath the gathered leg of his smalls.

She moves with careful, trembling precision, her boots clicking dully against the floor as she moves. There. A vicious, ragged thing, sunk into the long muscle high at the side of his leg. He’d been lucky the hound had missed the hamstring. “And this one?” She traces the bite with the end of her pen. He inhales almost sharply enough to call it a gasp, and she jerks her hand away.

She’s getting careless; she can’t afford that here. At home, maybe, but not here. It’s just—she’s so tired of pretending she doesn’t care. Fatigue makes mistakes, hunger makes mistakes, and right now she’s brim-full of both.

Hubert doesn’t deserve her carelessness, though, not when she’s stripped him nearly naked before so many strangers. The loose drape of his smalls is forgiving, but there are limits, and she had better not test them. She’d thought—she’d meant the pen to be different from her own touch.

It’s a moment before he speaks. She can hear the breath in his throat. “There was…an individual who threatened your Majesty’s life. It was necessary to remove that threat. There was a guard dog.”

“An assassination.” She says it calmly, as if it’s natural. It is, of course; that’s one of the things House Vestra has always done for House Hresvelg.

He nods.

Edelgard allows herself to move again, a pitifully small outlet for everything threatening to boil over in her. “Did you object to the work?”

“Your Majesty?” Hubert sounds genuinely surprised at her question.

“Some would call it dirty.” He certainly always had. She comes to a halt facing the room, and he turns a little further away from them, following her. Still she doesn’t dare look down, in case she draws someone else’s attention to any obvious sign of his arousal, but she can at least deny them the chance to look. “Were you insulted, that I asked such things of you?”

“Never,” he says, low and intense. His eyes are so dark on hers. “It was my honor to spare you that burden. That knowledge. The ugliness of it all.”

Her voice is soft, but she pitches it to carry. “And take it on yourself?”

“I am yours to command, Lady Edelgard.”

They can hardly marry right now, fighting to push reforms through a suspicious and often-hostile nobility, but if they could he might make vows to her like this. She could give him a ring, instead of this mess of scars.

“You _are_ mine,” Edelgard says fiercely. Her heart is racing, a furious eager beat against her ribs. Her skin is too tight.

Hubert bows his head, but she can still see the deepening flush that warms his face.

She walks behind him and runs the end of her pen along the frightening band of the Thoron scar across his back. It’s faded to silvery-white now, but still wide as two of her fingers together. Jagged streaks curl away from the main scar like ferns unfurling. She hates it more than any of the others. “Tell them about this one.”

“The mage was aiming at you.”

“Thoron,” she says, for the benefit of the watchers. To the eternal flames with them all. “A lightning spell.”

“I pushed you out of the way, but it left me in the spell’s path instead.” Hubert might as well be speaking just to her, with no one else in the room. He has turned to show each scar before she even needs to ask, but his gaze has always been only for her.

Emperor or no, Edelgard can’t keep the tremor out of her voice; it vibrates with the strain. “You could have died.”

“My training left me better able to withstand magical energies than you, Lady Edelgard.”

“It could have stopped your _heart_.” Her free hand curls into a fist at her side. The pen presses painfully against her fingers as they tighten. She mustn’t touch him. She must not.

“And your death would not have?” Hubert breathes. Louder, he adds, “My only concern was for your safety.”

Edelgard whirls to face the chamber, hoping none of the assembled ex-nobles can see her shaking. “You are dismissed,” she says, her voice echoing against the pulse rushing in her ears. “Johannes von Gerth, Viator von Ochs, do not trouble yourselves to return this afternoon. Your claims on Adrestia are rejected absolutely.”

Viator is among the first ones out of the room, apparently smart enough after all to realize that insulting Hubert had been a tactical error. Johannes puffs himself up to protest, but whatever he sees in Edelgard’s face now finally stops him. His shoulders slump as he leaves, defeated at last.

“You are dismissed as well,” Edelgard tells her guards, when they are the only ones left in the room and making no move to leave. “Surely you don’t doubt that Hubert is able to protect me?”

“Your Majesty,” the captain says, bowing with her hand on her heart, and leads her men out. They are all too well-trained to snicker within earshot, which is something.

Edelgard waits, tense as an overdrawn bow, for the door to close. Only after the latch sounds heavily as it falls into place does she turn again, and cross the narrow space between herself and Hubert in a stumbling rush. He must have turned at the same time she did; his arms close around her even as she pushes up onto her toes and reaches to pull his face down to hers.

The kiss is frantic, desperate; she’s not sure which of them is shaking still, or whether it’s both of them, but his shoulders—scarred and whole alike—are warm and real under her hands. She pulls away just long enough to tear at the buttons to her gloves, fingers slipping on the tiny circles several times before she finally gets them through the buttonholes. Hubert takes her right hand and tugs her glove off with much more urgency than he’d removed his own; she yanks her left glove off with her teeth.

“Take your smalls off and sit down,” she says, breathless. “In that chair.”

“I—” His eyes widen with something she thinks is shock.

Edelgard drags her skirts up to her waist, fumbling for the ties to her own smalls. She can feel the fabric clinging to her where she’s soaked into it and winces as she pulls them down—not going to be fun to put back on, but she didn’t exactly plan this. “Is that all right?” she asks, balancing on one foot as she works them over one still-booted leg. She absolutely does not have the patience to get her boots off. She might leave her cape on.

“I…hardly belong there, Lady Edelgard.” His voice is a ruin—something so low she feels it inside her lungs as much as she hears it—as he watches her drop her smalls next to his long-discarded shirt.

The chair is a gilded behemoth representing all Lord Arundel’s highest ambitions, practically the size of the old imperial throne in Enbarr and glittering brightly. “You belong where _I_ say you do,” Edelgard says. “Not them. If I want—” She almost holds back the words. She can’t, or risk all her hopes for reform. They spill out anyway: “If I want you on my throne, if I want my ring on your finger, if I want to crown you myself, _no one_ but you can tell me no.”

Hubert makes a broken sound deep in his throat, something without the breath even to be a moan. His hand goes out to the table beside him and tightens, white-knuckled, as if it’s all that’s holding him up. His erection strains against the cloth of his smalls without concealment now, and she wants it with a fierceness that aches between her legs with every beat of her pulse, wants _him_ with so much more than that. She’s burning up with it, flame in truth.

“Sit down,” she says again. “If you will.”

He gets his smalls off and almost falls into the chair, sunless-pale and lean and scarred against all the lush gilt and crimson. His cock curves up toward his stomach, the tip already shining, and Edelgard pushes the writing-table to the side and looks at him and thinks, _Yes_.

Then she closes the last of the space between them. This time her gloves don’t get in the way. She gathers the heavy fabric of her skirts up so she can get a knee to one side of him, and his hands settle around her waist, steadying her. She puts her hand on his shoulder anyway, just because she can, and feels the smooth heat of his skin beneath her bare fingers. The scar at his throat is just past her thumb, and she quickly pulls the rest of her skirts out of the way so she can settle across his legs. His thighs are warm through the cloth of her stockings, hot against the bare skin above, and she can feel the muscle there tense as she straddles him.

“Lady Edelgard—” he says, hands still gentle at her waist in spite of the strain in his voice.

“Tell me.” She bends her head to kiss the thin raised line that she couldn’t quite reach with her hand—her mouth tender on the scar itself, then more urgent against the unmarked skin of his throat next to it, hard enough to bruise. Hubert tilts his head, opening up more to her, and his fingers flex against her hips. She’d cover all his scars if she could, if that wouldn’t hurt him worse.

She feels his throat work before he speaks. “You called me yours. I want…that.”

Another rush of desire threatens to consume her. She pushes her skirts behind her and rises back up onto her knees. He won’t let her go, she knows that; she doesn’t need to worry about her own balance with him here. She could do anything, and he’d still catch her.

His cock twitches as she wraps her fingers around it, guiding him into place. “You _are_ mine,” she says, and it ends on a moan as she sinks onto him in one long easy slide. “I’ll—ah—I’ll tell anyone you want.” He’s pinned by her weight but his hips still jerk up against her at that, another of those broken breathless sounds vibrating against her chest.

It’s too much, it’s—Edelgard can feel her orgasm building already, shortening her breath, sparking under her skin, drawing more pleasure out of her with every rippling clench of her cunt. She kisses him, wordless and clumsy with it, and when she wraps her arms around him he pulls her closer, one hand settling at the small of her back while the other moves with desperate tenderness along her spine.

She can feel the Thoron scar smooth beneath her fingertips, slick as silk. “ _Tell_ me,” she gasps, pulling her mouth away from his again, panting for breath against his unscarred shoulder and feeling his heartbeat resonating through her own chest. Alive. He’s alive, they’re both alive, he’s—

“I’m…yours,” Hubert manages, the words strained to breaking, and she comes with a shuddering cry, tightening all around him and dragging him with her.

Slowly, rational thought returns.

She loosens the grip of her arms around his chest and says, “Did I hurt you?”

“Not so much as a rib,” Hubert says. She’d never thought to hear his voice as warm and soft as this outside their own rooms—the palace gardens, once or twice—a few other places, maybe. Never here, never in Arundel. She’d never thought she’d feel like this in Arundel again either: proud, and confident, and loved.

And, she realizes as his softening cock slips out of her, sticky. With a reluctant thought for the upholstery, she climbs up on still-wobbly legs and fetches her abandoned smallclothes to wipe them both off with. She can get by without any for one afternoon, and there’s a fire in the back of the room they can be burned in after.

“Edelgard.” Hubert stops her with two fingers against her wrist when she reaches him. He’s a magnificent sight, flushed and naked and still unstrung with pleasure, all against a backdrop of Adrestian red. “I can—”

“I want to,” she says. “I asked…rather a lot of you, very suddenly.” She’d been nothing but impulse, with neither strategy nor thought. It had been careless to the point of stupidity; she’s glad nothing bad had happened; she would, no doubt, do it again.

“You see that I did not object,” he says, wry, with a gesture at himself. “No. I would not ask you to tell them about this, and make them fear you a liar hiding dynastic ambitions even as you break up their own dynasties. But.”

“But?” Edelgard prompts, when she’s dried his thighs and still he hasn’t finished the sentence. She looks up at him, holding his gaze.

Hubert straightens in her chair. “What you did was something close. These scars are all from your wars or for your safety, Lady Edelgard.” She opens her mouth to protest—to apologize?—and he goes on, quiet and unshaken. “I have you written into my skin.” The smile he gives her is almost shy. “I think…I think I like them knowing that.”

“Oh,” she says, with something close to awe, and kisses him again before she steps back to let him rise.


End file.
